It came as a little surprise when I was told that we would be crossing the borders and heading over to Salzburg, Austria!
The first place we came to was Mirabell Garden where the film Sound of Music was filmed in the 60s.
Quite sadly, my childhood was quite ching chong so I didn’t watch the show when I was younger.
But I do remember snippets of the show, especially those classic scenes from videos I’ve watched over the years.

Here are some pictures of the beautiful Mirabell Garden!

The steps where the children in the movie sang “Do Re Mi” on! :p

Our guide was this really cute Austrian lady named Ruth.

The city was somewhat divided into two by the river.
I have to say the atmosphere on the two sides is so different!
The view on the connecting bridge was breathtaking too. And the buskers made the walking around extra enjoyable too!

There are Mozart related souvenirs everywhere because this place is where Amadeus Mozart was born!

And this was his birth place, now a museum.

Mozart chocolates were pretty popular with the tourists too.

We were also introduced to the oldest cafe in town.
If you ask me, it doesn’t look like it has been there for over a century! Still so pretty!

And the smallest house in Salzburg! The one caught in between two taller buildings!
So poor thing. Hahaha.

And of course, Sir Antonio came out to play too! Hahaha.
I hope we didn’t look too stupid taking pictures of Sir Antonio in the middle of the streets. :p

We also had a nice Bavarian themed dinner with A’s company where everyone was dressed in black, red and yellow.
I know it sounds lame but it’s actually quite fun to see everyone decked in colours of the Germany flag. :p

Big thank you to Runway Bandits for the lovely yellow blazer! ❤

The highlight of the day, however, has got to be the trip to visit Dachau Concentration Camp back in Munich.
I have always had a deep interest in WWII and strangely I have a penchant for camps or museums related to such stuff.
I had high expectations for the Dachau Concentration Camp before I went there.
But I think they cleaned up the place pretty well and the entire place felt more peaceful than creepy.

That said, I still think the whole history about these concentration camps and all the torturing that took place in them
is too cruel and appalling.
Hopefully we will not let such things happen again.

The words on the gate says “Work leads to Freedom”.

The uniforms worn by the prisoners.

This reminds me of this movie I watched called “The Boy in The Striped Pyjamas”, it was from a book of the same title.
It is a Holocaust film that explores the horror of a World War II extermination camp through the eyes of two 8-year-old boys;
one the son of the camp’s Nazi commandant, the other a Jewish inmate.

If you haven’t watched this show before, please do.
I managed to find the full movie on Youtube!
Here is Part 1. Thank me later! 🙂

This room is the shower room where the prisoners were all stripped naked, hair shaved, and made to shower together.
Towards the end, this is also made into a place to torture prisoners with extremely hot or cold water.

If you look closely, you will be able to see the yellow streak on the ceiling where the pipes used to be.

There were also a few standees around the room that showed pictures taken back
during the times when the camps were still in use.
After standing in front of the standees for a while, I realized that the pictures there were all taken at the spot where
the standees were placed.
It creeped me out a little, but it was really sad to imagine how all these people used to be humiliated,
insulted and treated with such unjust in this room.

These poles were once used to hang bodies.

Now we can only see this structure here to remind us of all the people who lost their lives there.

We also visited the bunks for the prisoners.
They were all re-constructed to model after how the rooms used to look like.
The beds used to be bigger until the camp got too overcrowded.
According to the guide, there were about more than 300 prisoners
kept in one room (about the size of our classroom) towards the end.

Today, the barracks were all demolished, leaving only numbered stones to mark where they once stood.

The gas chambers and furnaces.
This is not in the main premises of the camp, but well hidden behind the woods.
Prisoners were made to bring fellow inmates to the gas chambers and made to get rid of their bodies after they were gassed.
Many of the prisoners who were there did not even know about the gas chambers when they were there.

These are the fake shower sprouts.

I heard many stories from friends who visited other concentration camps in Poland, etc.
Some said there were heaps of clothes from prisoners, heaps of hair taken from prisoners.
And about how their hair were all taken to be woven into clothes because there was a lack of resources back then.

Although the entire area in Dachau Concentration Camp was cleaned up pretty well.
Walking through the entire camp through the main gates, to the shower rooms, to the barracks and finally to the gas chambers
certainly makes me imagine how horrifying it must be for the prisoners who were once here.
Let’s hope history will not repeat itself.